seems rather silly to take a shower just before going out into the rain, but i did anyway, and a long, steaming hot one. i'm going out in the rain because fei had arranged to pick me up downstairs and go to the farmers' market, although now of course i don't know that the market would still be on. now that i'm sitting here drying myself the rain has become a full lightning storm, and i expect she would ring in the next 30 minutes to say it's all off, or that we would go later, when the storm has passed. i hadn't slept last night but for a carefully timed 50minutes, from around 6.30. had been up through the night with pat barker's the ghost road, which i'm a hundred or so pages into and liking less than regeneration, before that i had finished margriet de moor's the virtuoso, an easier read than her other two novels that i had begun once but abandonned, but if i bothered to finish it it was a matter of duty to a book already begun and unlikely to find at home. it's easier than her other books because this one moves along, with a clearer plot and lots of sensual details and the novelty of an 18th century naples setting and the love affairs of nobles and the world of opera, but i was greatly disappointed for the reviews had been very positive, for all three of her novels in fact, and yet i've not managed to like a single one, and this one much less than the others. i can't say i cared much for any of the characters, particularly not the self-absorbed castrato, even if he has the most heavenly voice in all of europe. and i feel embarrassed by the sex (and there's plenty of it). sex in literature ought to be erotic, not candy floss. the rapturous exaltation stuff winterson does better in written on the body and i was less bored there, or cringey. i wonder how long more they'll let me take books out of the library. i shall get back to pat barker.